The Daily addressed the arrival of RU-468, the abortion drug, presenting a brief overview of how it induces medical abortion. The legalization of this drug is obviously a highly controversial issue deeply rooted in morality and medical ethics. I think there is a great deal more to consider about this brand of abortion than the Daily brought to light Wednesday. Does the potential to develop into a full grown adult grant a fetus all the rights that you and I have? That is the central question. A fetus still depends on another human being for its existence, but so do people in nursing homes, extremely ill adults in hospitals and serious accident victims. By law these people fall under the protection of Constitutional rights, as do newborns and premature babies. Does the physical location (in or out of the uterus) or a person’s ability to fully support their own existence warrant the right to life? It’s extremely troubling to hear people talk about the rights of women, men and children and completely deny that unborn children have a right to life in the next breath. If we are going to demand that women have a right to control their physical state, then we need to demand that unborn people have the right to exist at all! Women do indeed have the right to choose what to do with their bodies. Pregnant women (with the exception of rape) did choose what to do with their bodies and that choice resulted in pregnancy. But besides all the moral complexity, what about the risks involved in a chemically-induced miscarriage? What effects will this have on the woman’s health? And let’s take into consideration that depending on which of the first 49 days she aborts on, she will actually see the effects of that abortion. She will have to look at the death of a human life via blood and excrement. What kind of psychological and emotional health problems would result from that experience? The article also addressed how women could make the abortion “look like a miscarriage.” What are we encouraging here? There’s no doubt that this drug makes it easier for women to hide or lie about the pregnancy. How will this realistically affect the rights of the father toward that child? The quick-fix mindset adopted by most of society today is devastating, especially when we start to quick-fix away the lives of human beings.

Sara Brenner

Senior

Genetics and philosophy